Yesterday, Google announced Project Genie, a new generative AI tool that can apparently create entire games from just prompts. It leverages the Genie 3 and Gemini models to generate a 60-second interactive world rather than a fully playable one. Despite this, many investors were scared out of their wits, imagining this as the future of game development, resulting in a massive stock sell-off that has sent the share prices of various video game companies plummeting.
The firms affected by this include Rockstar owner Take-Two Interactive, developer/distributors like CD Projekt Red and Nintendo, along with even Roblox — that one actually makes sense. Most of the games you find on the platform, including the infamous “Steal a Brainrot,” are not too far from AI slop, so it’s poetic that the product of a neural network is what hurt its stock.
Unity’s share price fell the most at 20%, since it’s a popular game engine. Generally speaking, that’s how most games operate: they use a software framework, such as Unity or Unreal Engine, which provides basic functionality like physics, rendering, input, and sound. Studios then build their vision on top of these, and some developers even have their own custom in-house solutions, such as Rockstar’s RAGE or Guerrilla’s Decima.
Yeah for sure. It feels like an uphill battle more than its ever been though.
I feel that.
Even in my current job they’re pushing us to use chatbots and LLMs even when it doesn’t make sense. There’s a lot of people hoping for the mythical productivity boosts that snake oil salesmen are shoveling. Going to the point where they see a future where “you check in prompts to source control because LLMs will be so good at translating those”. Which is batshit but you gotta let c level people learn this the hard way and fire everyone else for their mistakes.